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Bunker and bunker courtyard

Station 7

In the concentration
camps the prisoners lived in constant fear of the brutal treatment and terror
exerted by the SS. In the fall of 1933, Theodor Eicke, the commandant of the Dachau concentration camp
at the time, issued the “disciplinary and punishment regulations for the
prisoner camp”. As part of these regulations a catalogue of measures was drawn
up that enabled severe penalties to be imposed in the concentration camps,
including death sentences. Moreover, this set of regulations created the
illusion that a legal order was being followed; in reality however, every SS
man could act arbitrarily and simply put a prisoner on report.

The most frequently
imposed punishments were detention in the bunker, floggings, the so-called tree
or pole hanging and standing at attention for extremely long periods.

There were three
detention buildings (called “bunkers”) in the Dachau concentration camp. The first,
improvised building contained five cells; in the fall of 1933 a former toilet block
was converted into a series of cells for 20 prisoners. As part of the camp
redevelopment in 1937/38 a prison with 136 cells was build behind the
maintenance building, replacing the first two cell blocks.

The third bunker is
the only building still preserved today. It is part of the Memorial Site and a
small exhibition there provides information on the history of the detention
buildings in the Dachau
concentration camp and the fate of those imprisoned there.

Detention in the
bunker was a method that enabled the SS to isolate rebellious and defiant
prisoners, confine and expose them to harsher prison conditions outside the
reach of their fellow prisoners, and to torture or indeed murder them. The
Czech painter Josef Ulc described his time in the bunker: “I was locked up in a dark cell and forced to spend 14 days there. It
was terrible, all alone in complete darkness. I went hungry for three days
before I was finally given something to eat on the fourth. I never knew what
time it was, sometimes I felt I was going crazy. All I could do was tell the story of my life to myself, I remembered my
arrest, as I was denounced by an adversary; otherwise I softly hummed all sorts
of opera and operetta melodies, then hit songs, and even came up with new
melodies of my own. I kept on talking all the time, counted my steps (sitting
was prohibited) from 10 to 5,000. I often clasped my brow and asked myself if I
was still sane.”

The bunker courtyard
was located between the rear of the maintenance building and the prison block;
it was also used for carrying out punishments, torture, or executions.

Aerial view of the bunker area, end of may 1945. On top of the bunker courtyard is the former maintenance building, on the left edge of the picture you can see the "Jourhouse"

Photo of the former bunker, 2007.

Drawing "Standing cells" by the Slovenian surviver Bogdan Borcic. The standing cell, tiny cells where the prisoner wasn't able to sit down, were a punishment in the bunker.